While visiting his parents’ home in Central New York, Joe Granato discovered a box of forgotten illustrations, designed by he and other eight-year-old neighborhood friends—concepts for a video game for the original 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System. He decided it might be fun to try to realize those ambitions.

But instead of creating it for a mobile device or modern console, he set out to use the same techniques and adhere to the same limitations that would have been employed in 1988 to make a new cartridge-based game actually playable on the now-archaic hardware.

Gathering a small team of modern creatives, what began as an explorative novelty project about building a video game for a system 30 years removed from relevance escalated to a two-year, ten-thousand-mile journey into an esoteric subculture made up of devotees to creating new NES games; artists who thrive on limitation.

“This guy built the 8-Bit game he dreamed of as a kid, and it’s glorious!”

— Thomas Harlander, Los Angeles Magazine

“Inspiringly frustrating and delightfully anachonistic.”

— Chris Kaltenbach, Baltimore Sun

“A compelling story, even for people with no interest in video games.”

We're blessed to know many talented musicians, and we are very excited about the sonic wallpaper that lined The New 8-bit Heroes. While we're not putting out an official soundtrack in a traditional sense, we've provided links to all of the amazing artists so that you can construct your own by supporting them directly.